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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Poultry production is associated with a range of stresses, including nutritional, environmental, technological and biological/internal stress. Evidence is actively accumulating to prove that at the molecular level most of these stresses are associated with redox disbalance and oxidative stress, causing a decrease in productive and reproductive performance and compromising animal/poultry health. During evolution, antioxidant defence networks called “antioxidant systems” developed and are responsible for maintenance or redox balance of the cell/body and the prevention of damage to lipids, proteins and DNA. It is a difficult job for a poultry nutritionist to decide when the internal antioxidant system needs external help in the form of natural antioxidant dietary supplementation. Indeed, vitamin E and Se are essential parts of commercial vitamin–mineral premixes and are compulsorily added to poultry diets. Scientific evidence is actively accumulating to prove that carotenoid dietary supplementation could have positive effect on egg quality and poultry reproduction. Furthermore, carnitine and taurine are considered to be new entrants into the antioxidant family. They have been shown to regulate mitochondria function and integrity, and to be responsible for the maintenance of free radical production under physiological control. Carnitine and taurine are partly synthesised in poultry and the rest comes from the diet, mainly from animal-derived feed ingredients. However, in modern poultry production, the use of animal-derived feed ingredients has substantially decreased or often completely absent, making carnitine and taurine conditionally essential for poultry. The understanding of the molecular interactions between various antioxidants in poultry and their role in maintaining the redox balance and adaptation to stress in conjunction with transcription factors and vitagene activation is becoming a new direction in poultry nutrition.

This Special Issue will publish original research papers and reviews on aspects of natural antioxidants that relate to the following topics: the function and regulation of antioxidants in poultry; understanding the pathways of redox homeostasis in poultry; the relationship between various antioxidants and poultry reproduction and health; role of natural antioxidants in fighting commercially-relevant stresses (heat stress, mycotoxin stress, etc.), the role of natural antioxidants in maintaining meat and egg quality, etc.

Prof. Dr. Peter F. SuraiGuest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Antioxidants is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Antioxidants in the liver are particularly abundant in capital breeders that rely on stored resources for egg production. Capital breeders like eider (hereafter common eider) Somateria mollissima have disproportionately large livers with low levels of coenzyme Q10 when compared to other bird
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Antioxidants in the liver are particularly abundant in capital breeders that rely on stored resources for egg production. Capital breeders like eider (hereafter common eider) Somateria mollissima have disproportionately large livers with low levels of coenzyme Q10 when compared to other bird species. Concentrations of total carotenoids and vitamin E in the livers of eiders were smaller than predicted for similarly sized bird species. Eiders with high body condition estimated as body mass relative to skeletal body size had high levels of total carotenoids and low levels of coenzyme Q10. The concentration of total carotenoids per gram of liver increased with age, and vitamin E and total carotenoids accumulated during the winter onwards from February to peak at the start of incubation in April. Total vitamin E, total carotenoids, and coenzyme Q10 per gram of liver decreased with increasing beak volume. The size of the empty gizzard increased with increasing liver mass but decreased with total carotenoids and coenzyme Q10. The main components of the diet were blue mussels Mytilus edulis (40%), draft whelk Nassarius reticulatus (27%), and periwinkle Littorina littorea (10%). The concentration of vitamin E increased with the number of razor clams Ensis sp. and draft whelks in the gizzard and the concentration of total carotenoids increased with the number of beach crabs Carcinus maenas. These observations are consistent with the hypothesis that eiders are limited in their levels of antioxidants through food limitation. Furthermore, they imply that diet and morphological characters involved in food acquisition and processing are important determinants of the level of antioxidants in the liver.
Full article

Heat stress is a non-specific physiological response of the body when exposed to high ambient temperatures, which can break the balance of body redox and result in oxidative stress that affects growth performance as well as the health of poultry species. Polyphenols have
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Heat stress is a non-specific physiological response of the body when exposed to high ambient temperatures, which can break the balance of body redox and result in oxidative stress that affects growth performance as well as the health of poultry species. Polyphenols have attracted much attention in recent years due to their antioxidant ability and thus, can be an effective attenuator of heat stress. In this paper, the potential mechanisms underlying the inhibitory effect of polyphenols on heat stress in poultry has been reviewed to provide a reference and ideas for future studies related to polyphenols and poultry production.
Full article